THE PAPAL VISIT; Poll Finds Catholics in U.S. Are Defecting From Church

About one person in five who was brought up as a Roman Catholic no longer considers himself or herself an adherent of the faith, the latest New York Times/ CBS News Poll shows. The loss through such defections is about three times as large as the church's gain through conversions, the poll shows.

In all, 22 percent of the public were brought up as Catholics and claimed that faith today, the poll found. Six percent were brought up as Catholics and called themselves something else, and 2 percent were born outside the Catholic church and were now adherents. Among the former Catholics, about half said they had no religion and half said they were Protestants.

The shifts to and from Catholicism appeared to be closely connected to interfaith marriages. Three-fourths of those who had converted to Catholicism were married to Catholics.

About half the former Catholics in the poll of 1,480 adults interviewed by telephone Aug. 16 through 22 said they were married to someone not of the Catholic faith, and one-tenth of the group said they were divorced. In all, a fourth of the former Catholics were either now divorced or had divorced and remarried. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 4 percentage points for the lifelong Catholics and 8 percentage points for former Catholics. Opinion of the Pope

There were other important differences between the lifelong Catholics and the former Catholics. Forty-nine percent of those who left the church had at least some college education, as against 36 percent of lifelong Catholics; 40 percent of the former Catholics said they had a family income of $35,000 or more, against 34 percent of the lifelong Catholics.

The adults who left the church had an average age of 36, as against 39 for the lifelong Catholics.

One question that set the groups apart was their opinions of Pope John Paul II. Fifty-eight percent of the lifelong Catholics had a favorable opinion of him, as did 64 percent of the converts to Catholicism. But only 31 percent of the former Catholics had a favorable opinion, and 18 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion. Only 5 percent of the lifelong Catholics and 6 percent of the converts had an unfavorable view.

Thirty-one percent of the former Catholics called themselves political liberals, as against 21 percent of the lifelong Catholics.

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A version of this article appears in print on September 10, 1987, on Page B00010 of the National edition with the headline: THE PAPAL VISIT; Poll Finds Catholics in U.S. Are Defecting From Church. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe